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by Natasha
Rainy days are perfect for making crafts with your little one. This year, we seem to be having more rainy days of summer than hot ones, so Baby H has grown used to seeing the arts and crafts box pop up at least once a week.

A while ago, I came across Frugal Family Fun Blog, a site offering free downloads of craft projects for children. One of the first projects Baby H and I embarked upon was making baby chicks. It’s basically gluing, painting and putting things together.

If you’re looking to do some arts and crafts with your little one, I recommend this easy project.

I pre-cut two circles out of yellow paper, orange triangles for the feet and the beak and cut up the feathers into small pieces. This is to help along with the project, since Baby H - at 22 months old - may lose interest if we spent too much time doing prep work together.

I watched as Baby H glued the two yellow circles onto a colourful piece of construction paper, a large circle for the body and a smaller one for the head. Next, he painted the body of the chick with yellow paint and set it aside to dry. Once ready, Baby H glued the small bits of feathers and pompoms onto the chick’s body. He was fascinated by the glue, and was a little too eager to stick everything together. I had to glue on the chick’s legs, feet and beak myself to make sure that they end up in the right places. I didn’t particularly feel like inventing a new brand of birds and explaining the modified chick to my son later on.

Baby H helped glue the remaining parts and the googly eyes, which he kept giggling at. At the end of it all, my son had learned a few new things, made himself a chick and I got to spend some time with him on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Arts and crafts are really important to me, and I think all of us really, because they help us see the artistic potential of our children early on. And once in a while, it’s fun to do something really messy and end up stuck to all sorts of things.

Natasha is a new mommy to her first born, Baby H. She runs ShopHaven, a blog that reviews products and profiles local businesses and individuals from the Ottawa area. Natasha is also the creative force behind ShopHaven Baskets; a highly customized gift baskets service.